Recollections of the Last Ten Years, Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the Spanish Frontier: In a Series of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Massachusetts

Popular passages

Page 104 - The hands travel about from boat to boat, make inquiries, and acquaintances, and form alliances to yield mutual assistance to each other, on their descent from this to Nevr Orleans. After an hour or two passed in this way, they spring on shore to raise the wind in town.

Page 170 - ... begin to inquire if any tradition, if any the faintest records can throw any light upon these habitations of men of another age. Is there no scope beside these mounds for imagination, and for contemplation of the past ? The men, their joys, their sorrows, their bones, are all buried together. But the grand features of nature remain. There is the beautiful prairie, over which they " strutted through life's poor play.

Page 174 - THE people in the Atlantic states have not yet recovered from the horror, inspired by the term " backwoodsman." This prejudice is particularly strong in New England, and is more or less felt from Maine to Georgia.

Page 71 - They have a distinct and striking moral physiognomy, an enthusiasm, a vivacity and ardor of character, courage, frankness and generosity, that have been developed with the peculiar circumstances, under which they have been placed.

Page 185 - Few good books are brought into the country. The few literary men that are here, seeing nothing to excite or reward their pursuits, seeing other objects exclusively occupy all minds, soon catch the prevailing feeling. The people are too busy, too much occupied in making farms and speculations, to think of literature.

Page 103 - Some have loads of cider, and what they call " cider royal," or cider that has been strengthened by boiling or freezing. There are dried fruits, every kind of spirits manufactured in these regions, and in short, the products of the ingenuity and agriculture of the whole upper country of the west. They have come from regions, thousands of miles apart. They have floated to a common point of union.

Page 168 - Or did those fairy hopes of future bliss, Which simple Nature to your bosoms gave, Find other worlds, with fairer skies than this, Beyond the gloomy portals of the grave, In whose bright climes the virtuous and the brave Rest from their toils, and all their cares dismiss ?— Where the great hunter...

Bibliographic information

Title

Recollections of the Last Ten Years, Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the Spanish Frontier: In a Series of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Massachusetts